The stock is looking weak now as it has been falling for many days. The momentum is increasing because the volumes are rising. The last results have perhaps done more damage than anticipated. The confidence about the future outlook has become a little more negative. Some are pointing at weakening traffic stats which imply lesser possibilities of growth in the fundamentals. If it continues to fall, $30 will be the next target and that is still 15% away. Expectations for a good fundamental performance from Yahoo (YHOO) are higher and that is being thought as a better stock for 2013 compared to AOL. In fact, there were options strategies being floated which have called for selling $45 call for January 2015. This gives a sense of the future expectations from the stock. However, despite the corrections, the stock has delivered good returns for investors, especially if the dividend related to sale of licenses is taken into account. Licensing /monetizing of patents has changed the future of several companies and smaller companies like PLC Systems (PLCSF) are trying to optimize the value of proprietary technologies they possess. AOL recently closed sale of its digital music sites to Townsquare Media group for an undisclosed sum. Sites like The Boot, BoomBox, NoiseCreep and Comics Alliance have been sold. “Be On” (an AOL company), recently reported results of a survey which indicated that a majority of the online video spend in the last 12 months was coming from budgets earlier reserved for TV advertisements. The results of the survey indicated that there is growing awareness about the importance of internet as a rich brand medium. According to the survey, better audience targeting and measurement were the main reasons for increasing online video spend in the future. So the market for that segment may be increasing, but it remains to be seen how much AOL will be able to exploit the potential.
